But really now.. I have seen many fall this year driving home from work. One even lasted 5 seconds before burning out, and was brilliant white. (Saw it sometime in February.)

Do people on the coasts just have so much light pollution that anything other than a jumbojet or helicopter with running lights on causes excitement? Seriously, meteors happen all the time. The one that fell over russia was especially large, and had a lot of energy. That's why it was news. This one over the east coast just sounds like your garden variety to me.

That'd actually be a good thing, really. I mean, it's short-term terrible about civilian casualties and the destruction of a city and all, but long-term, the investments in space technology and meteor detection would be vastly more positive for everyone in general than any of these other wars have been.

Yes, and how many people need to die from lightning before we build an iron dome to protect us from the weather?

Meteor impacts are very low probability events. Just because after thousands of years of human history we now are approaching the technology level to deal with meteors doesn't mean that the risk of meteors has changed. And if you are worried about extinction events, 99.999% of your attention should be focused on the ones that humans would cause (nuclear war, bioweapons release, etc.).